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SWEDE TRUTH ABOUT
TURNIPS

The Turnip Man is a sprightly Canadian centenarian who
still rides a bicycle. His real name is Emery Kilmer, of London, Ontario, and he
celebrated his 100th birthday on October 1, 2002.

"We called him the turnip man because he used
to come play cards with his car full of turnips and sell them for 25-cents
apiece," says Geraldine Martin, who has been playing cards with Kilmer for
20 years. ("I used to give those away," Kilmer chips in). - London
(Ontario) Free Press.

We don't know whether eating tons of turnips accounts
for Emery's remarkable fitness, but mangold wurzels, those football-size turnips
English farmers grow for sheep and cattle feed, were once used to cure coughs.

"One use of wurzels not widely known was as an
excellent cough cure," says Joan F. Basden, whose father, Richard
Blacklocks, grew them on an 11-acre farm in Romney Marsh, Kent, in the 1920s and
30s. "Slices about half an inch thick were interlaced with brown sugar and
allowed to stand. A thick syrup, ideal for children with whooping cough, was
produced."

Scots eat a lot of turnips, a word they shorten to
neeps. "Haggis is traditionally served as 'haggis, neeps and tatties,'"
says Judy Creighton, in The Canadian Press. "The neeps are mashed
turnip or swede, with a little milk and allspice added, and the tatties are
creamed potatoes flavoured with nutmeg."

What's the difference between turnips and swedes? On
October 1 - the London (Ontario) Turnip Man's birthday - the London
(England) newspaper The Times published a letter from Dr Nick O'Donovan,
of Havant, Hampshire. He said that when he asked a local shop assistant for a
swede he was given a large, orange- fleshed vegetable. When he asked for a
turnip he was shown a much smaller, whitish vegetable with a green top. "I
wonder at which junction of the M1 this nomenclature changes, and why?" he
asked.

That letter led to a string of replies from other
readers:

Mark Wilson, from Nottingham, took a survey of
the company tearoom which, he said, suggested the border to be
Yorkshire, with Nottinghamshire and Cheshire clearly in the
"South." Lancashire was divided, with Manchester
supporting the South but other areas applying the northern
interpretation. On very small samples the Irish Republic and New
Zealand seemed to follow the northern pattern while the US opted for
the southern. Australia was apparently too dry to grow either
vegetable.

Ruth Parker, from Mousehole (pronounced
mowzel, please!), Penzance, Cornwall wrote that in England's
far south-west, a turnip was a large orange vegetable, an essential
ingredient of a Cornish pasty.

London football fan Peter Tray wrote: that in
Northern Ireland "the big orange thingy is a turnip, the small
whitish one a white turnip, and a swede is the England football
coach."

From Düsseldorf, Germany, Paul A. James
recalled that as boys on Tyneside he and his friends used to make
lanterns from turnips on Hallowe'en. "It took an eternity
to hollow out the hard orange flesh of the 'snadgey' (as we called
them) and then carve the ghoulish features," he said. "I can
still recall the smell as the flame of the night-light roasted the lid
of the lantern. Kids these days have it so much easier with the soft,
yielding flesh of the pumpkin."

Keith Virgo, of Newmarket, quoted The
Oxford Book of Food Plants' description of turnip
"roots" as yellow or white and swede "roots" as
purple, white or yellow. The turnip was an ancient vegetable, but the
swede was introduced in Europe only in the 17th century, he said,
adding that if Cornish pasties had an older history, they must have
contained turnip.

Dr F. W. Taylor, of Oxford, said that in his
youth in rural Northumberland, a turnip was invariably known as a
bagie (pronounced with a long a, like 'baygie'). "I never knew
the origin of this," he said, "but my Swedish-American wife
assures me it has to be a contraction of rutabaga, the name by
which it is (also universally) known in her home state of
Minnesota."

Peter Stamford, of Port Elgin, Ontario,
Canada, wrote "The swede sounds a more upmarket vegetable
in Ontario, where it is called a rutabaga. This name, I
believe, is derived from the Swedish dialect rotabagge, meaning
'root bag.'"

Finally, John Holliday, of Leeds, West
Yorkshire, wrote that John Reynolds (1703-79), a pioneering yeoman
farmer of Adisham, near Canterbury - and John's great (times five)
grandfather - was responsible for the inadvertent introduction into
the UK of the swede or, as he then chose to call it, "the turnep
rooted cabbage", when an incorrect variety of seed from the
Continent was delivered to him.

Americans seems to have solved the problem. The
Merriam-Webster online dictionary says that a TURNIP (name probably derived from
turn + neep; from the well-rounded root) is either of two biennial herbs of the
mustard family with thick edible roots: (1) Brassica rapa rapifera with
usually flattened roots and leaves that are cooked as a vegetable, or (2) Rutabaga.
It adds that a turnip is also a large pocket watch.

The minutes of the Society for the Encouragement of
Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (now the Royal Society of Arts) for November 23,
1768, solemnly recorded: A motion was made that a Bounty of Fifty Pounds be
given to Mr Reynolds for his Introduction of the turnep rooted Cabbage not
heretofore made use (of) in this Country, but more especially for his particular
attention to the views of this Society by divulging his Discoveries to the World
through their means. Agreed to.